Tag Archives: Jesus

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Messiah and the Temple of God

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tallit_templeThe re-building will begin when the Messiah comes. This Third Temple will be on the Temple Mount, exactly where it previously stood. In fact, Maimonides writes that one sign that the Messiah is the real Messiah (and not an imposter) will be when he re-builds the Temple on the Temple Mount.

“Rebuilding the Temple”
Commentary on Tisha B’ Av
Aish.com

Belief in the coming of the Messiah has always been a fundamental part of both Judaism and Christianity. The Hebrew word for Messiah, Mashiach or Moshiach, means anointed, as does the Greek word, christos. Thus in Christianity, Christ is just another word for the Messiah. Much has been written about Jesus as the Messiah within the Christian realm, but little information has been publicized to the uninformed Jewish community concerning the coming of a Messiah, whom all we know about is that he will be a direct descendant of king David. Although Jesus has been proposed by Christianity to be such a descendant, Judaism does not accept Christ as their savior or king. Because the Messiah cannot be separated from God’s Third Temple and because God’s Third Temple is destined for all people…

“Coming of the Messiah”
ThirdTempleInfo.org

“For thus says the Lord: David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel, and the Levitical priests shall never lack a man in my presence to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings, and to make sacrifices forever.”

–Jeremiah 33:17-18 (ESV)

In some parts of religious Judaism, one of the very strongly held beliefs is that when the Messiah comes, he will rebuild the Temple on its original site in Jerusalem. In fact, Jewish “anti-missionaries” use the current lack of the Jerusalem Temple as “proof” that Jesus couldn’t have been the Messiah (since if he was, he would have rebuilt it 2,000 years ago).

More than that, according to the Judaism 101 website, the Messiah will do many important things.

The mashiach will bring about the political and spiritual redemption of the Jewish people by bringing us back to Israel and restoring Jerusalem (Isaiah 11:11-12; Jeremiah 23:8; 30:3; Hosea 3:4-5). He will establish a government in Israel that will be the center of all world government, both for Jews and gentiles (Isaiah 2:2-4; 11:10; 42:1). He will rebuild the Temple and re-establish its worship (Jeremiah 33:18). He will restore the religious court system of Israel and establish Jewish law as the law of the land (Jeremiah 33:15).

Also, according to AskNoah.org, Gentiles will be able to worship in the rebuilt Temple.

Torah Law holds that Gentiles are allowed to bring burnt offerings to G-d in the Temple when it is standing in Jerusalem. There is a specific commandment to let us know that an animal (sheep, goat or bullock) offered in the Temple by a Gentile must be unblemished, to the same degree as the offering of a Jew. (Leviticus 22:25)

The same website citing the prophet Isaiah, declares that in the days of the Third Temple, Gentiles will be able to take on a greater role than in previous eras.

“And it will come to pass at the end of days that the mountain of G-d’s House will be firmly established, even higher than the peaks, and all the peoples will flow toward it as a river. And many nations will go and will cry, ‘Let us go up toward the mountain of G-d’s House, to the House of the L-rd of Jacob, and we will learn from His ways and walk in His paths, for out of Zion goes forth Torah and the word of G-d from Jerusalem.’ ”

–Isaiah 2:2-3

But why am I writing about this?

It’s come up on more than one occasion at the church I attend, that certain things have changed because of Jesus. Since I’m kind of sensitive to the spectre of supersessionism (also called “replacement theology” or “fulfillment theology”), what has and hasn’t changed always gets my attention. Both in the Pastor’s message and in Sunday school, one piece of information I’ve heard is that before Jesus came, worship of God was confined to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, and after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, worship of God was no longer confined to a specific, geographic location.

You can see that this might present a problem if you also believed the Messiah was supposed to rebuild the Temple upon his return. Would that mean a step backward? Would our “freedom” to worship anywhere be revoked and Jerusalem once again become the locus for religious control and sacrifice to God?

old-city-jerusalemWell, yes and no. Frankly, it’s not that clear cut. We know that even during the Second Temple era, synagogues and centers for prayer (not always the same things) were available for Jews. After all, Jewish people were scattered not only all over Israel in those days, but across the civilized portions of the Earth. Recall the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:26-40) who likely was a Jew on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It would have been difficult for most of world’s Jewish population to travel to the Jerusalem Temple every time they wanted an encounter with God. It was very likely that there was provision for both individual and communal prayer for Jews, so the Temple wasn’t literally the only place of worship.

Of course to obey the mitzvot, Jews were obligated to travel to Jerusalem on certain occasions including the moadim and particularly for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but while extremely important, it wouldn’t have been possible for all Jews because it would require leaving home and undertaking lengthy journeys several times a year. While we don’t have much information on him, it’s likely that the Jewish Ethiopian had made only one 1,200 mile long trip between his country to Jerusalem when Philip encountered him. In those days, a trip of such length over land could have taken up to two months, so it wasn’t the “quick dash” it would be by car or plane in our day and age.

Also, looking forward, we have this.

Then everyone who survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Booths. And if any of the families of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, there will be no rain on them. And if the family of Egypt does not go up and present themselves, then on them there shall be no rain; there shall be the plague with which the Lord afflicts the nations that do not go up to keep the Feast of Booths. This shall be the punishment to Egypt and the punishment to all the nations that do not go up to keep the Feast of Booths.

–Zechariah 14:16-19 (ESV)

It would be very difficult for the representatives of all of the nations of the world to observe Shavuot (Feast of Booths) in Jerusalem if there were no existing Temple.

It is true that John writes in Revelation 21:22 that he saw no Temple in the city, presumably New Jerusalem, but there are vast periods of time being described in his recording of his vision, so we can’t use that one verse as evidence that the Third Temple will never be built by Messiah after his coming (return).

So what’s the big deal?

Only that the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus the Messiah may not have (permanently) changed as much as we might think it did. The church may ultimately have to integrate a more Jewish perspective of Messiah than we previously have. Yes, many of us think we’ve done a pretty good job at “rediscovering the Jewish Jesus,” but I don’t think the majority of us have truly engaged the reality of what that actually means.

I’m not criticizing Pastor Randy or anyone at the church I attend (and I know Pastor Randy sometimes reads my blog), but I am suggesting that at least in this one area, Christ may not have changed what we think he changed. Unfortunately, many Christians take the idea of what Jesus did to Judaism a little too dogmatically and treat Jews, Judaism, and Jewish Holy sites quite poorly, as this commentary I received on Facebook attests.

I have been at the Wall, Jews Holiest Place, and seen bus loads of tourist arrive. Even I cringed at the sight of shorts, halter tops, men with out shirts, cameras and water bottles in tow. I have seen the garbage left behind. I have heard the ‘chatter’ at the Face of the Wall and observed the frivolity of trying to place a paper prayer ‘for a friend’ in the highest unreachable crack. (a paradise for rock climbers). I have heard prayers for ‘the Jews to be saved”….I have stood by women ‘claiming the place in the name of Jesus”.

Jerusalem, to include the Wall, is not an International place of holiness. Once the sacredness of the place is removed it becomes one more place to be trashed. The fact that the Reform movement, Women at the Wall and other such groups are irritated that ‘they’ can not make the rules and regulations simply indicates their dislike for the Ultra-Orthodox. One side may be Extreme but the otherside opens the door to Liberal attitudes and the slippery slope to “so what, this is just another wall!”

christian-at-the-kotelThe analysis seems kind of harsh but then again, it’s probably justified given how casually and callously some people treat this Jewish Holy place.

To you and me, the Kotel may not have the same meaning, but for most religious Jews (and Jesus and all his apostles were and are religious Jews), it is all that’s left of where once the Divine Presence of God dwelt among His people Israel. It is also a symbol of hope in the coming of Messiah, the redemption of Israel (which doesn’t mean quite the same thing in Judaism as it does in Christianity), and the return of hope, life, and peace for the Jewish people and in fact, for all the nations of the Earth.

If it also happens to be the site of where the Christ will rebuild the Temple and establish his reign as our King, shouldn’t we at least try to respect it’s holiness? I know that in Christianity, we consider each believer to be a “Temple” containing the Holy Spirit, and we tend to look at ourselves as replacements for the physical Temple, but this “human Temple” imagery doesn’t preclude the future existence of a Third Temple. We tend to think that something is either this or that, left or right, one or the other, as if we are computers communicating in binary language, but since we’re dealing with God here, is it too difficult to believe we can be (metaphorically) a “Temple” and the physical Temple will one day be rebuilt by Messiah? Is it too much to ask for both?

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Message to the Sons of Solomon

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philip_and_the_ethiopianAnd King Solomon gave to the queen of Sheba all that she desired, whatever she asked besides what was given her by the bounty of King Solomon. So she turned and went back to her own land with her servants.

–1 Kings 10:13 (ESV)

Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is a desert place. And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship…

–Acts 8:26-27 (ESV)

The Ethiopian history described in the Kebra Negast, or “Book of the Glory of Kings,” relates that Ethiopians are descendants of Israelite tribes who came to Ethiopia with Menelik I, alleged to be the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (or Makeda, in the legend) (see 1 Kings 10:1-13 and 2 Chronicles 9:1-12). The legend relates that Menelik, as an adult, returned to his father in Jerusalem, and then resettled in Ethiopia, and that he took with him the Ark of the Covenant.

-Budge, Queen of Sheba, Kebra Negast, chap. 61.
quoted from Wikipedia

I’ve written before about the section of Acts 8 that chronicles the encounter between Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch in relation to D. Thomas Lancaster’s commentary in Volume 6 of the Torah Club: Chronicles of the Apostles. Today (as I write this “church report”), it was Pastor Randy’s turn to teach us his perspective during Sunday services where I go to church.

It was also Charlie’s turn to discuss it in Sunday school and it was interesting. I already knew that Charlie believed the Ethiopian was Jewish but as Pastor started delivering his message, he shared with us that he just that week had changed his opinion about the Ethiopian and now believes that he must have been a Jew! Interesting.

I’m torn between whether to write about the history of the Ethiopian Jews, which is a topic of some controversy and speculation, or if I should focus on why God found it necessary to send an angel to tell Philip to find the Ethiopian (Acts 8:26). I think I’ll focus on the latter.

Let me explain.

In teaching the Sunday school lesson, Charlie remarked more than once how unusual he thought it was for God to send “an angel of the Lord” to tell Philip to stop everything he was doing in Samaria and travel south on the desert road to find one man who was returning to his native Ethiopia after a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Why was this one man so important?

From a traditional evangelical Christian point of view, converting a high-ranking official of a foreign country to faith in Jesus Christ is a great way to spread the gospel message to all of the other high-ranking government officials in that country as well as to the general body of citizens. But I don’t think we can exactly map 21st Century evangelical strategies to First Century CE Jewish devotion to the sect of “the Way.” Charlie thought, given how the message of Christ was transmitted first to the Jews, then to the Samaritans, and finally to the rest of the nations, that God believed the Jewish population in Ethiopia was close to the heart of their Creator, and that the “Good News” of Messiah was a message God intended for all Jews to embrace. After all, much of the New Testament text addresses the spread of the Gospel into Europe, Asia, and the Near East. What about the Jews to the south?

This is all speculation of course, and only one part of a single chapter in the New Testament is devoted to transmitting such a message in that particular direction, but what Charlie also said more than once got my attention. He said that God wanted to make sure all of the Jews got the message that God had changed the rules.

What? What rules?

(I should say at this point, when Charlie made his comment about “changing rules” I was seriously considering what I should say or do in response. I chose not to say or do anything, but given my sensitivity to the matter of supersessionism in the church, I was afraid that I would have to defend against such a theology at the cost of my budding relationship among these fellow believers. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.)

Actually, something important did change thanks to Christ.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…

–Matthew 28:19 (ESV)

While Israel had always been intended to be a “light to the nations” (Isaiah 49:6), this is the first indication that the Messiah wanted people from all of the nations, and not just from Israel, to become disciples of the Master and grafted in sons and daughters of God. As we progress forward and especially attending to Acts 10 and beyond, we see that God’s intent was not to require the Gentiles to convert to Judaism or abandon their own national and ethnic uniqueness in order to become disciples. The Holy Spirit was just as available to the Gentile disciple as to the Jew.

Walking TogetherIn this specific sense, something had changed. Prior to this moment in time, if a Gentile wanted to worship the God of Israel in a covenant relationship, he or she had to embrace Judaism (that’s more or less an exact quote from Pastor Randy). With the command of Christ, which the church calls “the great commission,” anyone from anywhere could worship God in a covenant relationship without converting to Judaism (the concept of conversion is complicated…it probably didn’t exist as such during the days of Moses or David, but it was a recognized practice during the late Second Temple period and beyond).

Did God want Philip to tell the Ethiopian that God changed the rules? A plain reading of the text doesn’t suggest such a thing. From my point of view, what God wanted Philip to tell the Jewish Ethiopian was the good news of the Messiah who had come and will come again, as revealed by Isaiah 53. Why God wanted this event to occur is up for grabs, but what the Ethiopian carried back with him to his land and to his people was the gospel message, or as much of it as Philip was able to transmit in the time they were together and related to the passages from Isaiah. What fruit resulted upon the eunuch’s homecoming and in the years and centuries to follow, we cannot know.

But if God changed anything, it wasn’t His “rules” or His Torah but rather access. God opened up covenant access to Himself for all peoples. There are two portions to the good news of Christ. Of course, there is the good news for the Gentile, that we can now come to God in covenant through the blood of His son. However, Christianity rarely considers the good news of Christ to the Jew who already had such a covenant relationship (which would include the Jews in Ethiopia), that the Messiah had come, the King of Israel had been born, that he died and rose and sits at the Father’s right hand, and that at the proper time, Messiah would cause a scattered Israel to be gathered together as a nation and one day, the King would rule from Jerusalem (I’m not suggesting two, separate paths of salvation, one for Gentiles and one for Jews, but because of Israel’s special unique relationship with God, the Messiah has more and different good news for the Jews in addition to the good news he has for the Gentiles).

On Friday May 24, 1991: Over the course of 36 hours, a total of 34 El Al Hercules c-130s – with their seats removed to maximize passenger capacity – flew non-stop.

14,325 Ethiopian Jews came home to Israel, to be greeted by thousands of Israelis who gathered at temporary absorption centers, hotels and hostels to welcome their brethren.

Operation Solomon saw the rescue of twice the number of Ethiopian Jews in Operations Moses and Joshua put together.

-from bluestarpr.com

A Christian group said Tuesday, June 7, it would help organize “the return of the last 8,700 Ethiopian Jews to Israel” by sponsoring what are known as “Aliyah” flights, the coming months.

“Last Ethiopian Jews to Return to Israel, Christian Group Says”
-from worthynews.com, June 8, 2011

I know I’m stringing together bits and pieces of scripture, news, and commentary in a less than rock-solid structure, but consider for a moment that Jews from all across the nations have been returning to Israel and are being gathered to their people. God has never forgotten them nor will He ever forsake them. Perhaps that’s why He made it a point to send an angel to Philip and to insure that the message of the Messiah would reach all of his people, including the Jewish Ethiopians.

Just a thought.

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The Evolution of Judaism, Part 6: Evolutions

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ancient_jerusalemThe best evidence that the temple was the locus of prayer during the First and Second Temple periods is the book of Psalms. Virtually all the biblical psalms, even those that lament personal or national catastrophes or that hail a king at this coronation, are hymns of praise to God. They range in date from the period of the monarchy, if not earlier (some of them are Israelite versions of Canaanite or Egyptian hymns), to that of the Maccabees.

All these texts imply that the recitation of prayers was a prominent feature of Jewish piety, not just for sectarians like the Jews of Qumran but also for plain folk. Jews who lived in or near Jerusalem prayed regularly at the temple. This is the plausible claim of Luke 1:10, “Now at the time of the incense offering, the whole assembly of the people was praying outside [the temple],” and Acts 3:1, “One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, at three o’clock in the afternoon.”

By the third century BCE, diaspora Jews began to build special proseuchai, which literally means “prayers” but probably should be translated “prayer-houses.” Instead of “prayer-houses,” the Jews of the land of Israel had synagogai, which literally means “gatherings” but probably should be translated “meeting-houses.” Whether they prayed regularly in their “meeting-houses,” which are not attested before the first century CE, is not entirely clear.

The history of this (Amidah or Eighteen Benedictions) prayer is immensely complicated, but its basic contours were established no later than the second century CE, and its nucleus certainly derives from the latter part of the Second Temple times. It bears obvious similarities to the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4).

…by the end of the Second Temple period, sections of the Torah were read publicly in synagogues every week.

The purpose of all these rituals was, as the Torah repeatedly says, to make Israel a “holy” people (Exod. 19:6; Lev. 19:2; Deut. 7:6). To better achieve this objective, the Jews of the Second Temple period developed new rituals, broadened the application of many of the laws of the Torah, and in general intensified the life of service to God.

After the destruction of the temple, the petition was changed from a prayer for acceptability of the sacrifices to a prayer for their restoration, and the petition entered the Eighteen Benedictions. In rabbinic times, the prayer was still in flux.

This practice is based on the idea that God can be worshiped through the study of his revealed word.

-Shaye J.D. Cohen
Chapter 3: The Jewish “Religion:” Practices and Beliefs
From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, 2nd Ed.

Forgive the rather lengthy history lesson from different portions of this chapter in Cohen’s landmark book, but as I’ve continued to read from his work, I’ve been struck by how Judaism developed significantly in practice and in its comprehension of a life of devotion to God from the days of the Mishkan (Tabernacle) in the desert to the post-Second Temple era. Some time ago, I began a series of blog posts intended to outline the evolution of Judaism as it applies to Yeshua (Jesus), halakhah, and the “acceptability” of the various Judaisms in any given age and across time to the God who established Israel as a nation. You can follow the link at the end of Part 1 of the series to review all of my comments to date, which ends at Part 5. I had intended for Messiah in the Jewish Writings, Part 1 to be the “sixth” part of the series, but it was pointed out to me that certain “weaknesses” in the scholarship of the material from which I was quoting made it unsuitable for that purpose.

Before proceeding, you should probably review Noel S. Rabbinowitz’s paper “Matthew 23:2-4: Does Jesus Recognize the Authority of the Pharisees and Does He Endorse their Halakhah?” which can be found as a PDF as published in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 46:3 (September 2003): 423-47. That, along with reading the other “Evolution” blog posts in this series, should provide the foundation for continuing (and ultimately concluding) the discussion here.

In providing the series of quotes from Cohen’s book, I intended to illustrate how what was acceptable Jewish practice in worship, Temple sacrifice, and prayer developed over time and was never a single, static set of religious rules and procedures that perfectly reflected the intent of the Torah and God in the life of Israel. Sometimes in certain corners of Christianity and its variants, we find people who sincerely are seeking a more authentic method of practicing their faith, based on some sort of idealized and perfect template or model that was established, either by Moses or Jesus. Somehow that particular set of behaviors is believed to be what God wants us to do and is the only valid model by which we should construct our faith practices in the present age.

But as the title of this series implies, perhaps the human practice of worshiping God can never be static nor was it ever intended to be a single set of rigid rules and concrete regulations that never modified in the slightest across the long centuries between Sinai and the present.

I don’t mean that right and wrong don’t have timeless value and that God changes His requirements for humanity at a whim, but humanity changes, circumstances change, and what seems right to do at one point in human history seems very much different at another point on the timeline of existence. Surely how Solomon viewed what was proper worship differed greatly from what the Rambam might have considered right Jewish practice, and yet can we say that either one of them (or both) was wrong? They were both certainly convinced that they were doing what God required, but who they were, where they lived, and the demands of history upon both of these men (and the untold scores that lived before and since) were radically dissimilar.

But while you may understand this relative to the history of the Jewish people, what at all does this have to do with believers in Jesus and who we are in Christ?

Agrippa’s first full year as king over Judea (41/42 CE) was a Sabbatical year. Drought had already begun to hamper the land. The people were gathered for Sukkot to pray for rain and to hear the new king read from the Torah (see Deut. 31:10-11). The apostles and the disciples of Yeshua were present along with the rest of the pious of Israel to witness the historic event. Their hearts burned within them, jealous for the Master. They longed for the day when King Messiah will stand in the Temple and read the Torah aloud to the assembly of Israel.

-D. Thomas Lancaster
Torah Club, Volume 6: Chronicles of the Apostles
from First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ)
Torah Portion Shemot (“Names”) (pg 329)
Commentary on Acts 12:1-24

Yom Kippur prayersLancaster is no doubt taking a bit of poetic license in describing whether or not the hearts of the apostles were “burning” on this occasion, but it does cast the early Jewish disciples of “the Way” in a light that integrates them with overall Jewish religious and social participation. In the church, we tend to think of the “early Christians” as a body wholly apart from the various Judaisms that surrounded them, but as I’ve mentioned before, the Jews who were devoted to the Messiah as part of “the Way,” were just as much a valid sect of Judaism as any of the other Judaisms (Pharisees, Essenes, and so on) with which they co-existed.

In fact, the Jewish disciples of the Master in the days recorded by Luke in the book of Acts can only be separated from overall, normative Judaism anachronistically.

The King James Version of Acts 12:4 translates the Greek “pascha” as “Easter.”

The Greek word “pascha” (which transliterates the Hebrew “pesach”) occurs 27 times in the New Testament. In every instance except Acts 12:4, the King James translators rendered it as “Passover.” In Acts 12:4, they retained William Tynsdale’s anachronistic, Christian rendering and translated it as “Easter.”

The translation betrays a theological bias. It assumes Christianity replaced Judaism. Christ cancelled the Torah, and the Christian Jews would not have been keeping Passover any longer. In reality, the apostles had never heard of a festival called Easter. They had no special Christian festivals. They kept the Passover along with all Israel in remembrance of the Master, just as He had instructed them… (Luke 22:19)

-Lancaster, pg 338

Lancaster continues in his commentary, explaining that the separate Christian observance of Easter wouldn’t be established until the Second Century CE as the Gentile believers in Rome began to neglect observing Passover, but began to revere the Sunday that fell during the week of Unleavened bread as the day of Christ’s resurrection. As you can see, the passage of time and the demands of history have resulted in both Judaism and Christianity evolving and changing how they practice their divergent methods of worshiping God. In fact, the divergence of “the Way” from the rest of the Judaisms post-Second Temple is likely part of those historical requirements.

Is all this desirable? Probably not. That is, it would be great to have a Christianity that actually remained a normative part of Judaism and was able to include Gentile practitioners who came to faith in the Messiah, but such was not to be.

Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.

–Romans 11:25 (ESV)

Paul seems to be telling us that the schism between the Gentile and Jewish believers was inevitable for the sake of the Gentiles and that, referencing Isaiah 59 and Jeremiah 31, by doing so, all Israel will be saved. (see Romans 11:26-27)

If Judaism was practiced differently and in fact, in radically different ways between the ancient times of Moses, David, and Solomon, the time of the Babylonian exile, the time of Herod, the Second Temple, and the rise of “the Way,” and in the post-Second Temple rabbinic period, can we say that all of these Judaisms are “valid?” I don’t think we have much of a choice but to say that they are. If you disagree, then you have to point to some place in history and say “here’s where the Jews made their big mistake.” I know that many Christians will point to Jesus and say that the Jewish rejection of their own Messiah caused them to become lost and gave rise to the “age of the Gentiles,” but be careful. For the first fifteen years post-ascension, only Jews were disciples of Jesus Christ. Even after Peter’s fateful meeting with Cornelius and the subsequent mission of Paul to the Gentiles of the diaspora, Jews remained in total control of the “Jesus movement” within Judaism until the fall of Jerusalem and the scattering of the vast majority of the Jewish population among the nations (there has always been a remnant of Jews living in the Land). It is rumored that there were Jews in synagogues acknowledging Yeshua as Messiah into the second, third, and possibly even up to the fifth century CE or later.

Rabbi Joshua Brumbach wrote a blog post called Rabbis Who Thought for Themselves which records the lives of a number of prominent 19th century Rabbis who all came to the knowledge and faith of the Messiah in the person of Yeshua (Jesus), and we know of a remnant of Jews in the 21st century who also have come to faith and yet have lives that are completely consistent with modern Jewish halakhah.

At no one point in history will you find the quintessential moment where you can say “that is the true Judaism” or for that matter, “that is the true Christianity.” Humanity in all our forms has been struggling with our relationship with God, what it means, and how to live it out since the days when God walked with Adam in the Garden. We never get it quite right because we live in a broken world and our vision of who we are, who God is, and what it all means is fractured and distorted, even with the Spirit of God residing with us as a guide.

staring-at-the-cloudsWe can look at the mistakes we have made and are making even now, but we cannot say that “at such and thus time, we got it all right.” We never got it right, we just made different mistakes. But faith and devotion have been a constant thread running through the tapestry and that is what we can find tied to our own heartstrings. We can then grab hold of that thread and pull ourselves along the line, touching the lives of the saints and tzaddikim who came before us, who like us, got some things right and some things wrong, but who like us, did their very best to serve the God of Heaven.

It’s easy to point a finger at history and at men who have been dead for hundreds or thousands of years, and vilify them in order to make ourselves look better, but in reality, they were no different from us in the important ways of how human beings work. Our only constant is love of God and of each other. We look to God to be the unchanging part of our own ever-changing universe. And we wait for the day when King Messiah will stand before Israel in Jerusalem and before the body of believers from the nations, and read the Torah aloud, and we will all hear his voice, and we will all know that we are his.

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Crying Out to God

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Standing before GodWhen the son of Reb Michel Blinner of Nevel was in mortal danger, he asked Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch, the “Tzemach Tzedek,” for a blessing. The Tzemach Tzedek responded, “Awaken the power of trust in G‑d with simple faith that He, blessed be He, will save your son. Thought helps. Think good and it will be good.”

And so it was that Reb Michel’s son was saved.

-Rabbi Yosef Yitzchaak Schneerson of Lubavitch
Igrot Kodesh (letters), vol. 7, pg. 197
Quoted from Chabad.org

A request is an expression of what we want, but the most effective prayer is an expression of what we desperately need. Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman, one of today’s great Torah sages, once told a visitor, “Last year you said you wanted this. So I asked you then, ‘Who says G-d wants this too?’ This year you said you needed this. In that case you should be successful in getting it, because our Father makes sure His children have what they need.”

-Rabbi Mordechai Dixler
“Who Needs Him?”
ProjectGenesis.org

I wrote my “morning meditation” Shemot: Trusting God yesterday, and so it wasn’t until last night that my wife sent me a link to Rabbi Tzvi Freeman’s article Is the Law of Attraction a Jewish Idea?

According to Wikipedia, the Law of attraction “is the name given to the belief that “like attracts like” and that by focusing on positive or negative thoughts, one can bring about positive or negative result.” It’s also the source of more books and materials than you can shake a stick at including The Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham by Esther and Jerry Hicks (no, I haven’t read it) and the very famous Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (no, I haven’t read this one, either).

But as Rabbi Freeman says, the “law of attraction places the human being smack in the center of the universe, pulling all the strings. You create your own reality.” For this to work, a person must make himself his own god and then have complete faith in that god. Sounds silly from a Christian’s point of view, but what if there’s something to all this “attraction” business after all?

The Law of Attraction is a popular idea that states that a person’s attitude attracts matching happenstance. Pessimism attracts misfortune, while optimism attracts good fortune.

The power of attitude to change the flow of a person’s life is a tacit assumption of much of Torah literature, particularly in that most influential source of common wisdom, the Psalms. “One who trusts in G‑d, kindness surrounds him!” (Psalm 32:10) “Fortunate is the man who puts his trust in G‑d!” (Ibid 40:5)

The sages of the Talmud similarly appear to take this law for granted. For example, in dismissing as useless superstition a folk-omen to determine whether one’s journey will meet with success or doom, the sages advise, “But don’t do it.” Why not? “Because perhaps the omen will be negative, the person will worry, and his fortune will go sour.” (Horayot 12a)

The idea is correct, at least according to Jewish philosophy and mysticism, but people tend to put their focus and trust on themselves rather than the One and true living God.

I quoted Rabbi Kalman Packouz in my earlier meditation, and I mentioned his list of 7 Principles for Trusting in God:

  1. The Creator of the universe loves me more than anybody else in the world possibly can.
  2. The Almighty is aware of all my struggles, desires and dreams. All I need is to ask Him for help.
  3. The Almighty has the power to give me anything I want.
  4. There is no other power in the universe other than the Almighty. Only He can grant me success and give me what I want.
  5. The Almighty has a track record for giving me more than I am asking for.
  6. The Almighty gives with no strings attached. I don’t need to earn it or deserve it. He will give it to me anyway.
  7. The Almighty knows what is best for me and everything He does is only for my good.

For Rabbi Freeman’s conceptualization of the “law of attraction” to work, we must trust in the God of Heaven for all things rather than in ourselves. If we trust that God will provide, then it stands to reason He will, at least according to Rabbi Freeman. If we are constantly worried, on the other hand…

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

–Matthew 6:25-34 (ESV)

Tree of LifeI mentioned Jewish mysticism before. Here is the parallel to the above from the Zohar:

The Lower World is always ready to receive and is called a precious stone. The Upper World only gives it according to its state. If its state is of a bright countenance from below, in the same manner it is shone upon from above; but if it is in sadness, it is correspondingly given judgment. Similarly, it is written, “Serve G‑d with joy!”—because human joy draws another supernal joy. Thus, just as the Lower World is crowned, so it draws from above.

-Zohar, volume 3, 56a

I’m not holding up Kabbalah as, in any sense, equal to the words of the Master, but I do want to show that there are different directions from which we can approach trusting God and having confidence that He will provide. It’s in that confidence that we are healed.

And there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased. And Jesus said, “Who was it that touched me?” When all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the crowds surround you and are pressing in on you!” But Jesus said, “Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me.” And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”

–Luke 8:43-48 (ESV)

Maybe I’m taking this too far, but look again at what Jesus says in verse 48: “Daughter, your faith has made you well.”

He didn’t say “I have made you well” but rather “Your faith has made you well.”

Let’s take another example:

And as Jesus passed on from there, two blind men followed him, crying aloud, “Have mercy on us, Son of David.” When he entered the house, the blind men came to him, and Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to him, “Yes, Lord.” Then he touched their eyes, saying, “According to your faith be it done to you.” And their eyes were opened. And Jesus sternly warned them, “See that no one knows about it.”

–Matthew 9:27-30 (ESV)

Look at the question Jesus asks in verse 28: “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” The two blind men had to ascent that they did believe Jesus could restore their sight. Once they did (I guess Jesus didn’t necessarily take them at their word), the Master said, “According to your faith be it done to you.” In other words, the ability of Jesus to heal these two men was directly related to their faith in his ability to do so.

Woman prayingOK, I don’t want to create a formula or mechanical set of steps for healing and manipulating God, but this does seem to positively connect back to what Rabbis Freeman and Packouz have been saying about trusting God and its effects. No, I’m not saying that God is powerless in the face of a faithless humanity, but I am saying that it seems as if those of us who are aware of God are in some mysterious sense “partners” in His activity in our lives.

In my examples from the Gospels, we seem to see that a lack of faith would have resulted in few or no miracles from Jesus and that, conversely, great faith (even without the conscious awareness of Christ in the case of the woman with the “issue of blood”) produces great miracles. We further see this relationship between faith and “attracting” the power of God here:

And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.

–Matthew 13:58 (ESV)

Again, I don’t want to suggest that we can exploit some sort of “system” for getting God to do what we want Him to do. After all, how many people of sincere and fervent faith have prayed for the healing of a loved one and instead of a bodily healing, the person being prayed for died? (I know of a number of such people and families)

I’ve said before that there are no guarantees and that we trust in God because, as believers, we simply have no choice. Except we have a choice and we often choose not to trust God. It gets more complicated when we realize that trust or lack thereof, isn’t a matter of our just doing or not doing something, since even a person with supreme trust in the Almighty is still expected to take an active role, not only in prayer, but any other activity involved in achieving what we need.

A meditation for when things get rough:

The world was brought into being with Goodness. And the ultimate good for Man is that he should not be shamed, but feel as a partner in the fulfillment of the divine plan. Free bread is to us bread of shame—such is the nature of Man.

That is why nothing good comes without toil. And according to the toil can be known the harvest that will be reaped in the end.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Toil”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

Groaning by itself won’t do a bit of good. A groan is only a key to open the heart and eyes, so as not to sit there with folded arms, but to plan orderly work and activity, each person wherever he can be effective…

“Today’s Day”
Thursday, Tevet 23, 5703
Compiled by the Lubavitcher Rebbe
Translated by Yitschak Meir Kagan
Chabad.org

Blessed by GodI suppose I’m writing all of this because I’m trying to convince myself to just “let go and let God,” as the popular Christian saying goes. But it’s still not that easy.

Where were you when I established the earth?

–Job 38:4

One who reads the book of Job cannot but have compassion for just and pious Job, who appears to be unfairly subjected to suffering. All the rational arguments that his friends offer to account for his innocent suffering appear hollow, and the only acceptable answer is God’s remark to Job, “Where were you when I established the earth?”

In other words, a human being can see only a tiny fragment of the universe, an infinitesimally small bit of time and space. Our vantage point is much like a single piece of a huge jigsaw puzzle, a tiny fragment of the whole picture, which makes no sense on its own. Only when the entire puzzle is assembled do we realize how this odd-shaped piece fits properly. Since no human being can have a view of the totality of the universe in both time and space, we cannot possibly grasp the meaning of one tiny fragment of it.

This explanation does not tell us why the innocent may suffer, but only why there cannot be a satisfactory explanation. Acceptance of suffering therefore requires faith in a Creator who designed the universe with a master plan in which everything that happens has a valid reason. This belief may not comfort a sufferer nor prevent the sufferer from becoming angry at the Designer of the universe. The Torah does not in fact condemn the anger of the sufferer (Bava Basra 16b), but does require that he accept adversity with trust that God is just (Deuteronomy 32:4).

Acceptance does not mean approval, but it does allow us to avoid the paralyzing rage of righteous rage, and to go on with the business of living.

Today I shall …

… try to realize that nothing ever happens that is purposeless, and that I must go on living even when I disapprove of the way the world operates.

-Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski
“Growing Each Day, Tevet 23”
Aish.com

Which in my mind, leads to this:

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

–attributed to Plato

I’m trying to write a more optimistic counterpoint to my earlier “Shemot” commentary, but I’m not doing a very good job. I can’t seem to summon up the will, the trust, or whatever it takes to just say “God is good,” and leave it at that. I continue to look at my life and at the world around me and find things that could be better (I’m employing understatement here). We’re all fighting a hard battle and we are begging God to please be kind. We don’t always receive the kindness we ask for, sometimes even in spite of our faith and trust.

But my wife sent me the link to the “law of attraction” article for a reason, so regardless of what I see or what I think about it, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt (and maybe…just maybe it would help) to be a little more trusting and optimistic.

My wife was listening to “When the Heart Cries” by Sarit Hadad on YouTube the other evening. Somehow, it seems appropriate to include that in this “extra meditation” as well.

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Tent of David: Returning to Faith

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TeshuvahFirst, the Christian church has forgotten that Jesus was and is a practicing Jew. Second, Christians have forgotten the centrality of Israel in God’s plan to redeem the world and her continued covenant status as God’s chosen people. Third, Christianity has an extremely low view of the Torah itself and the commandments God gave to the Jewish people. Fourth, the Christian gospel message, having replaced the broad and majestic vision of the kingdom of heaven with a knowledge-based individualistic salvation, has been emptied of its power.

-Boaz Michael
Chapter 2: The Church Needs to Change (pg 61)
Tent of David: Healing the Vision of the Messianic Gentile

If anything in the above-quoted paragraph shocked you as a Christian, then you probably need to get a copy of Boaz’s book and read it all the way through. However, I’m not writing this “meditation” today to shock you, but to remind you of something.

One of the objections I hear about “going to church” from believers who are not church-goers is that the church gives a whitewashed, “feel good” message, that doesn’t communicate the reality of the Bible, sin, and salvation. That may be true in other churches but it wasn’t in the one I attended last Sunday. It was anything but “whitewashed, feel-good.” The quote I opened this “meditation” with is part of that message. The message is that just because you believe, you may not have a terrifically realistic grip on the consequences of your belief. If you call yourself a Christian or a believer, but still can violate the Word of God with no feelings of guilt, anguish, or remorse, what you have may not even be what is called “faith.” Believing isn’t enough.

-from Day Zero

I mentioned in my last “church report” blog that Pastor Randy delivered anything but a “feel good” sermon about Christians and salvation. In fact, he was very pointed that “just believing” was not enough. We have to remember who Christ is and who we are in him and above all, why he had to die.

Interestingly enough, Boaz’s point about the Christian gospel message being emptied of its power seems to connect quite well to the Pastor’s sermon. Boaz continues.

Yeshua (Jesus) surely preached the gospel; his message – “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” – is just as much “the gospel” today as it was two thousand years ago. When Peter adjured the crowds after the coming of the Spirit on Shavuoat in Acts 2:38-39, his message was not “believe in Jesus; go to heaven.” It was “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.

-Michael, pg 87

Admittedly, Peter was delivering this message, the message of salvation, to a totally Jewish audience, and so there is no misunderstanding, let me verify that this message is for the “rest of us” who once were far off.

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

–Ephesians 2:11-13 (ESV)

We non-Jews were also once “far off,” as Peter said, but now we too have been brought near thanks to the Messiah, the Christ.

But if Peter says “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” what does that mean? Does it mean what you think it means?

That is the gospel message. Repent – change the way you live and your life and begin to obey the commandments of God. For the kingdom of heaven is at hand – you can, in some way, bring God’s rule down to earth through your actions; it is possible to “live now for the realization of this Messianic Age” (quoting Levertoff, “Love and the Messianic Age” (Marshfield, Mo: Vine of David, 2009), 32).

-Michael, pg 89

That’s probably not quite what Pastor Randy was getting at in his sermon last Sunday. Pastor was talking about people who have made an intellectual assertion that Jesus is Lord without ever incorporating that knowledge into an actual, lived faith…without any realization that Jesus died for my sins and that I have a personal responsibility to repent and beg for forgiveness.

awareness-of-godThat’s not the wrong thing to do of course, but looking at what Boaz is writing, salvation means more than just the saving of individual upon individual by giving out “go to heaven free” cards. The kingdom of heaven isn’t heaven, according to Boaz, and it has little to do with personal salvation as such, at least not as much as most of us were led to believe. Making a commitment of faith to God through Christ is an entire change of lifestyle in the here and now that has the power to change everything in the here and now. Salvation isn’t just the promise that we’ll go to heaven, it’s the promise that we’ll receive the power to, in some sense, bring heaven to earth.

As Boaz says, Yeshua didn’t simply teach “believe in me and go to heaven when you die.” If you read the Gospels carefully, you’ll see that he doesn’t really mention anything about what happens to you when you die. He mentions what happens to you when you live, if you repent and come to a true and saving faith.

The church needs to change, but not because the church is bad or that Christians are bad. The church needs to change because much of Christianity has taken the message of the Gospel and reduced it down to a simple “get saved” footnote and missed the larger point of what happens while we’re alive. No, it’s not a “works-based” salvation, but one of Pastor Randy’s scripture examples in last Sunday’s sermon was from James.

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

–James 2:14-26 (ESV)

You cannot have a true and saving faith unless it has changed your life. If your every action does not conform to the message of James and you are not behaving in a manner that reflects faith, then you probably should ask yourself if you ever repented at all when you “confessed Christ.” And beyond the “generic” helping to repair the world, as I learned recently (and this is also echoed in Boaz’s book), when we are adjured to help the needy, we in the church have a special duty to assist the poor, the sick, and the needy of Israel as it is said:

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

–Matthew 25:34-46 (ESV)

sukkoth-feastI know I’ve said a lot of this before, but I want to illustrate that Boaz Michael’s book has a much broader scope than you may have gathered from my previous review. It’s not just directed at those non-Jewish “Messianic” believers who are in the church or who are contemplating returning to church…it’s a message for all believers everywhere who may not have a complete understanding of what the Gospel is trying to tell us.

This is a message about who we are, who we are in Christ, and most importantly, what to do with the rest of our lives. It’s not a message about packing our bags and getting ready for the trip to heaven, it’s about what we do as disciples of the Master and sons and daughters of the living God. Where do we find God? Why are we needed by other people? How do we inspire hope in the world around us and be a light in the darkness?

This is the kingdom of heaven being drawn near to us and to the people around us…by who we are in our faith.

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Why Are We Needed?

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i-need-youThe sixth Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Y. Schneerson, recounted the following story some 64 years ago:

Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the first Chabad rebbe, had a disciple who was also a great philanthropist. Two causes that were particularly dear to him were supporting the Jewish community in the Land of Israel and ransoming captives.

This wealthy chassid had already married off his children and begun pledging dowries for his less-affluent relatives, when the wheel of fortune turned, and his finances suffered.

He was forced to borrow money, and at the end he was left penniless. Overwhelmed and pursued by creditors, he did what any chassid would do: he traveled to his rebbe and unburdened his heavy heart.

After listening intently to his complaints, Rabbi Schneur Zalman addressed him: “You speak about what you need, but say nothing of what you are needed for!”

In this week’s Torah portion, the first one of the book of Exodus, we read about the beginning of the harsh Egyptian exile. But with the disease comes the cure: in the same portion we read about the birth of Moses, the man who was to lead the Jewish people out of their bondage.

One of the first things we hear about Moses is that how he helps another person. Emerging from a sheltered existence as a member of Pharaoh’s household, he sees an Israelite slave being cruelly beaten by an Egyptian, and rescues him.

There are times in our lives when it may be challenging to think about anyone other than ourselves, but the message of Rabbi Schneur Zalman to the anonymous chassid rings true: You speak about what you need, but say nothing of what you are needed for!

Often, the best response to adversity is to break out of our comfort zones and extend a helping hand to another person with love and gratitude for all the good that we have.

-Rabbi Shaul Wertheimer
“What Are You Needed For?”
Commentary on Torah Portion Shemot
Chabad.org

I’ve recently lamented about the relative significance of our lives to God and His purposes, but I suppose the above-commentary, part of which I’ve read before, provides us with something of an answer. Still, it’s difficult when we have needs, to set those aside and to consider instead what we are needed for. When it is our heart that hurts and our eyes that grow dim, how can we view ourselves as the pilgrim instead of the exile? Yet we see that in God causing Moses to rise up among his Jewish brothers, that He created Moses to become both.

Some time after that, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his kinsfolk and witnessed their labors. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen. He turned this way and that and, seeing no one about, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. When he went out the next day, he found two Hebrews fighting; so he said to the offender, “Why do you strike your fellow?” He retorted, “Who made you chief and ruler over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Moses was frightened, and thought: Then the matter is known! When Pharaoh learned of the matter, he sought to kill Moses; but Moses fled from Pharaoh. He arrived in the land of Midian, and sat down beside a well.

–Exodus 2:11-15 (JPS Tanakh)

I can only imagine that after having grown up in Pharoah’s court, becoming a shepherd in Midian was something of a let down for Moses, at least at first. But in my imagination, I think of Moses finally marrying, raising sons, and eventually coming to terms and to a peace with the simple life, tending to his flock in the shadow of the mountain of God.

But then, God had other plans for Moses.

“You speak about what you need, but say nothing of what you are needed for!”

-Rabbi Schneur Zalman

But Moses said to the Lord, “Please, O Lord, I have never been a man of words, either in times past or now that You have spoken to Your servant; I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” And the Lord said to him, “Who gives man speech? Who makes him dumb or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and I will be with you as you speak and will instruct you what to say.” But he said, “Please, O Lord, make someone else Your agent.” The Lord became angry with Moses, and He said, “There is your brother Aaron the Levite. He, I know, speaks readily. Even now he is setting out to meet you, and he will be happy to see you. You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth — I will be with you and with him as you speak, and tell both of you what to do — and he shall speak for you to the people. Thus he shall serve as your spokesman, with you playing the role of God to him, And take with you this rod, with which you shall perform the signs.”

–Exodus 4:10-17 (JPS Tanakh)

Most of us have never been a prince in Egypt or even a wealthy philanthropist and chassid, but I’m sure many of you reading this have been poor (or are poor) and in need and have been focused more on your own desperation than the plight of the world around you. It’s only natural that when we are confronted with our own pain, we direct all our attention to it and ask for help. It is only natural that, when presented with a task or a mission that seems well beyond our capacities, we should try to turn it down or ask that it be assigned to someone else.

But sometimes God asks the most unlikely people to do the most unusual things.

For some days he was with the disciples at Damascus. And immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” And all who heard him were amazed and said, “Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon this name? And has he not come here for this purpose, to bring them bound before the chief priests?” But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.

–Acts 9:19-22 (ESV)

micah6-8And what does God ask us to do?

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

–Micah 6:8 (ESV)

For kindness is Yours, O God, when You compensate each person according to his actions.

–Psalms 62:13

In our productivity-oriented society, we tend to place value on the product rather than on the process. Success is praised and failure is condemned, and we have little interest in the circumstances under which others function.

This attitude might be justified in the marketplace, since commerce lives by the bottom line. Still, our preoccupation with commerce should not influence us to think that people’s successes and failures should be the yardsticks for how we value them.

God does not judge according to outcome. God knows that people have control only over what they do, not over the results. Virtue or sin are determined not by what materializes, but by what we do and why.

Since the Torah calls on us to “walk in His ways,” to emulate God as best we can, we would do well to have a value system so that we judge people by their actions, not their results. This system should be applied to ourselves as well. We must try to do our utmost according to the best ethical and moral guidance we can obtain. When we do so, our behavior is commendable, regardless of the results of our actions.”

Today I shall…

try to be considerate of others and of myself as well, and realize that none of us is in control of the outcome of our actions, only of their nature.

-Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski
“Growing Each Day, Tevet 19”
Aish.com

You and I speak of our needs to God and He desires this. But He also desires that ask Him what we are needed for. The answer is the reason we are all alive today.